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Cashing in on the Bible

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JUDAS by Benjamin Iscariot, recounted by Jeffrey Archer with Professor J Moloney

Macmillan £9.99

So, Lord Archer, what first led you to write a vindication of a man who has been "branded a traitor, a thief and a man willing to accept bribes"?

Of course, it may be quite unfair to suggest that his lordship was driven to concoct this "gospel" (and, incredibly, to persuade a Vatican theologian and Desmond Tutu to sign up to it) by a pathological need to project his private sense of grievance onto a larger stage. It is just as possible that he was driven by a purer motive - the desire to relieve a gullible public of as much money as possible.

The success of The Da Vinci Code has shown that there are big bucks to be had in blurring fact and fiction for the benefit of a public whose